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Division of Comparative Endocrinology (DCE): 2007 Fall Newsletter

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Message from the Chair

Bob Denver (rdenver@umich.edu)

We are looking forward to seeing you all in San Antonio this January. This will be my last meeting as chair of the DCE. Stacia Sower will take over the reigns at the close of the meeting. The meeting is shaping up nicely and Michael Romero is now busy planning the program. This year we are pleased to announce that Peter Thomas, Professor in the Department of Marine Science and Section of Integrative Biology at the University of Texas, Austin will be presenting the Howard Bern Lecture. The title of his presentation will be "Nonclassical Steroid Actions Mediated by Novel Membrane Receptors: Lessons from Studies in Fish." There are many activities planned for graduate students at the annual meeting in San Antonio. Also, the scheduled presentations mentioned by Michael Romero below should highlight your experience. Please encourage your graduate students and colleagues to attend.

Penny Swanson and Lynn Riddiford hosted the Western Regional Conference on Comparative Endocrinology (WRCCE) at Friday Harbor Laboratory March 23-25. There were 60 participants with 32 oral presentations and 7 posters. Professor Michael Adams of the Departments of Entomology and of Cell Biology and Neuroscience at the University of California at Riverside presented the annual Irving Geschwind Memorial Lecture; the title of his talk was "Peptidergic Regulation of Innate Behavioral Sequence." Immediately after the WRCCE (March 26-28, 2007) Tyrone Hayes hosted the International Symposium on Amphibian and Reptile Endocrinology and Neurobiology (ISAREN) in Berkeley, California. By all accounts both meetings were great successes.

Your elected representatives, Michael Romero and Cathy Propper have been doing an outstanding job getting us ready for San Antonio. We have an exciting program planned and I hope will see you at the DCE business meeting and DCE social in San Antonio. In the meantime, be sure to send me your thoughts and concerns about any aspect of DCE: rdenver@umich.edu.






Message from the Program Officer

L. Michael Romero (Michael.romero@tufts.edu)

The 2008 meeting in San Antonio, Texas

The program for the upcoming meeting in San Antonio is almost set. A total of 1002 abstracts were submitted. Of these, 475 requested oral presentations, 364 requested posters, and 54 requested either format (if you checked the "either" box make sure you check the format you've been assigned when the program becomes available). A total of 66 abstracts indicated DCE as their primary division. The rest of the abstracts were affiliated with a symposium. DCE is the primary sponsor for what promises to be an exciting symposium on Yolk Hormones. Several other symposia should also be of interest to DCE members, including one on Recent Developments in Neurobiology and another on Aeroecology (the ecology of things in the air). In addition, there will be a symposium on teaching evolution to undergraduates.

In addition to the scientific sessions, several other events have been set. This year's Howard Bern lecture will be given by Peter Thomas of the University of Texas, Austin. His lecture is scheduled for 6:30 on Friday evening (Jan. 4). It will be preceded by the DCE business meeting and followed by the DCE social. I would also encourage everyone to attend two unique additions to the program. Randy Olsen, the director of the film "A Flock of Dodos," will be giving 5 showings of his film followed by a discussion. There will also be reduce-priced tickets to an IMAX showing of "Volcanoes of the Deep" hosted by the director Richard Lutz.

This should be an exciting meeting, and I hope to see everyone there!






Message from the Secretary

Cathy Propper (Catherine.Propper@nau.edu)

We have had some wonderful meetings and have several upcoming conferences to choose among. Bob mentioned already the WRCCE and the International Society of Amphibian and Reptile Endocrinology and Neurobiology. Both meetings went extremely well, and Penny Swanson, Lynn Riddiford, and Tyrone Hayes deserve a great deal of praise for all the effort involved in organizing these events. The current thought for the next ISAREN meeting is that it will be held in 2010 in Berlin, Germany, hosted by Werner Kloas. Of course, SICB will be in San Antonio from January 2-6, 2008.

Some other conferences coming up in the next year are:

The Endocrine Society's Annual Conference in San Francisco June 15-18, 2008. http://www.endo-society.org/endo/

Society for Endocrinology's Annual Conference will be in Harrogate, UK from April 7-10, 2008. http://www.endocrinology.org/meetings/2008/bes2008/welcome.html

Society for the Study of Reproduction's Annual Conference will be held in Kona, Hawaii, May 27-30, 2008. http://www.ssr.org/Meetings.shtml

Gordon Conference on Environmental Endocrine Disruptors will be held in New Hampshire June 8-13, 2008. http://www.grc.org/programs.aspx?year=2008&program=envendo

6th International Symposium on Fish Endocrinology will be held in Calgary, Canada on June 22-27th, 2008. http://www.isfe.ucalgary.ca/lifetime.html

If you have any information/announcements you would like to see posted in the Spring, 2008 Newsletter, please let me know, and I will be happy to post it here. If you have any information that needs to go out quickly to the DCE membership, also send it to me, and I'll make sure it goes out by e-mail.

Announcements:

Call for Exceptional Photomicrographs:

Do you have a photomicrograph of exceptional interest and quality? If so, the American Microscopical Society invites and encourages you to enter it into the annual Ralph and Mildred Buchsbaum Excellence in Photomicrography Contest. The contest will take place January 3-4, 2008 during the SICB meeting in San Antonio, Texas.

Micrographs will be displayed at the AMS booth where SICB meeting attendees may evaluate them and vote for the best image in both black and white and color categories.

Winning micrographers in each category will receive a cash award, a photomicrography book and a luncheon ticket to the AMS banquet at the next SICB meeting. The images will be also be featured on the AMS website.

The contest is open to all SICB meeting participants; up to 3 entries each. Submissions must be prints, with maximum dimensions of 8 X 10 inches, unlabeled, unsigned, and mounted on poster board or foam-core mounting board. A single line of information identifying the subject (e.g., "Mouthparts of a mite") and stating the microscopical technique used (e.g., "SEM") should be below the photograph.

Entries will be accepted on the morning of the first full day of the meetings (Thursday, January 3, 2008) at the AMS booth in the exhibit hall. The deadline for submitting entries is before the exhibits close for lunch that day.

Voting begins on the afternoon of the first meeting day (January 3) and ends before exhibits close at the end of the second full day (Friday, January 4, 2008). All meeting participants who visit the AMS exhibit are allowed one ballot for each contest category.






Message from the DCE Representative to the Student/Postdoctoral Affairs Committee

Darren T. Lerner (dlerner@hawaii.edu)

Hello to all DCE graduate students and postdocs! I am looking forward to seeing you at our 2008 Annual Meeting in San Antonio (January 2-6th).

There are a number of events that you should be sure to attend, some of which are specifically designed for students. These include the Student "First Timer" Orientation, immediately following the Welcome to San Antonio Reception and the student/postdoc workshop tentatively entitled: "I Have a Great Idea, But Who Will Fund Me: How to Write a Grant". For this workshop, a panel of faculty members will discuss and field questions on various topics ranging from how to find funding opportunities to how to increase your odds of being funded. Don't miss out! The workshop will be immediately followed by the Society-Wide Social in Honor of Students and Postdocs. I also encourage you to attend the SICB and DCE business meetings. Please look at the meeting website for details (http://www.sicb.org/meetings/2008/)

SICB offers a generous student support program for the annual meeting and details of this program are given on the SICB website (http://www.sicb.org/meetings/2008/studentsupport.php3). To be eligible for the program you need to be a member of SICB, a presenting author, and be willing to provide one half-day of assistance during the meeting. The program provides financial support in the form of housing or registration fees. The deadline for this program is October 26 2007.

DCE offers two Best Student Paper awards at the Annual Meeting, one for the best oral presentation and one for the best poster presentation. Undergraduate students and graduate students who have not yet been awarded a PhD are eligible for the award, as are new PhD's who have received the degree no more than 12 months prior to the meeting. The work must be original and must be carried out principally by the student presenting the paper or poster. In any one year, a student can enter either the oral or the poster competition.

SICB and a number of other organizations offer student grants and fellowships. DCE students may want to consider the following funding opportunities:






Link to officer list on DCE page